2023 England – Brighton
18th December 2022
Thanks to COVID-19, it had been two years since we last went on holiday. During that time both my mother and my elder brother died and restrictions meant I was unable to go and visit them or go to the funeral. It had been a difficult time so we were more than ready for a holiday.
With great excitement, I packed my bag to meet Federika who was already in England staying with her daughter and grandchildren. One effect of Covid had been to make air travel much more expensive and less convenient. British Airways no longer flew to Croatia in the winter, so I had to fly with Vueling and change in Barcelona. As always, I got to the airport very early and as it was set in stone I had a baguette and a beer at the airport, at 8.20 a.m. it was the earliest beer of my life. I was sure I saw a hint of pity on the waiter’s face. At Barcelona airport I was directed into the international area where I had to wait three hours for my connecting flight with the only choice of food being a baguette or something from Burger King. Meanwhile, there was a superb view of the domestic terminal below which was full of interesting shops and restaurants. I was sure it was a conspiracy to encourage people to only take flights inside Spain.
I arranged for a taxi to pick me up at Gatwick Airport and drive me to the Grand Hotel, Brighton where I met Federika. It sounds a bit decadent but I was amazed at what good value it was when I booked it in September. At £120 a night with breakfast included, it was half the price of the boring Premier Inn at Victoria where Federika stayed when she had to renew her passport a few weeks earlier. The previous year we spent three weeks in an Airbnb apartment in Brighton which was good but there was no getting away from the feeling that we were staying in someone’s home. By the time we would have paid all the annoying extras for an Airbnb the Grand Hotel was cheaper.
Pulling up at The Grand with all its Christmas lights on was magical. 
We were shown to our room and although I certainly wouldn’t call it luxurious, it was very comfortable and I had paid a little extra for a giant bed. The day before leaving Croatia it was 18 degrees so I was wearing shorts and had the windows open which even for Dubrovnik was unusual for that time of year. I was concerned about being cold in the hotel bearing in mind the temperature had just risen to around zero degrees. The strange thing was that even though the central heating radiators were turned off, it was still so warm we had to turn on the air conditioning as we were not able to open the window.
Next morning I woke early for a physiotherapy appointment. The enormous breakfast room was nearly empty except for an idiot in the corner who was on a phone call with the speakerphone at full blast filling the whole dining room. I was pretty easygoing about most things but that was one of my pet hates and it was happening more and more, making it hard to find places where I could sit without being bothered. On that occasion it worked out well as when I told the waitress the problem, she showed me to a separate area in a room facing the sea which was much better. The breakfast deserved its excellent reviews and I loaded my plate with a full English. I moved to the bread department to put my mandatory two slices of bread onto the toast conveyor belt. When I leant forward to take the toast I wasn’t aware that my full English was at a slight angle so when I looked down I saw a pile of baked beans and half an egg next to my feet. I told the waitress who was very obliging and cleared it quickly but Mr Grumpy who came along a minute later told her not to allow people with hot food to loiter around the toasting area.
I went to my physio appointment at Hove county cricket ground and as I looked out from the waiting room at the desolate cricket pitch I thought of the countless hours when my dear old dad sat there during the happiest period of his life. I was reminded of a time when a batsman hit a six and the ball landed cleanly on my father’s ankle so he was taken to that same physio to be treated. It must have been very painful but as it was his team that had hit the six he accepted the pain as a price well worth paying.
My hip had been hurting me for the previous two years and as the three physiotherapists I had tried weren’t able to help I thought I would try out this one that had come highly recommended. She was the first to give me a thorough examination and diagnosed a problem with my pelvis although I would need an MRI scan when I got back to Croatia to confirm it. Weirdly, it was good news as at least I was a step closer to finding out what the problem was. My first thought was that I might need a hip replacement but after a lengthy consultation with Doctor Google, I thought it might be something called Bursitis. That would be great as it wouldn’t require a new hip and I was rather attached to the old one. It wasn’t troubling me too much and the biggest problem was that it would often give way underneath me so it looked like I was going to fall which gave people around me a bit of a scare.
We gave our grandchildren the choice of any restaurant in Brighton for lunch and of course, they chose McDonald’s. They each chose a “happy meal” as it came with a toy which went straight into the rubbish bin as soon as the meal was over which took around three minutes. I accidentally chose a cheeseburger “meal deal” and spent the next five minutes playing find the meat. In the shopping mall there were various Christmassy things for kids to do so it turned out to be a very pleasant morning although I was happy to return to the hotel for my afternoon nap while Federika took them home.
Every morning in Croatia I kept up with the UK news and with the cost of living crises always in the headlines I had the impression that with the dramatic rise in energy costs, most families were huddled around a lighted candle trying to keep warm. I certainly expected that there would be no Christmas lights outside people’s houses because of the cost of running them. Even those who could afford outside lights I thought wouldn’t switch them on for fear of flaunting their wealth at those that weren’t even able to heat their homes. So I was quite surprised to see that everything appeared to be normal and there were lots of Christmas lights everywhere. The irony was that the government had given all householders (even the richest) £400 to go towards energy bills, so in a roundabout way, taxpayers were paying some homeowners to run their Christmas lights. In Churchill Square, there was a small stand selling luxury muffins. We bought four tiny ones (literally one mouthful) which came to £10. I walked past the stall ten minutes later and there was a long queue. The shopping centre was as busy as I had ever seen it and the £80 I paid for a Lego set was dwarfed by people on the other tills who were paying £300 or more for a set.
One interesting development in the UK was that for the previous 45 years, it was necessary to ask shops and restaurants if they accepted credit cards. Now, all of a sudden I had to ask if they accepted cash. I didn’t know if it was due to COVID and the spreading of germs or the inevitability that cash would eventually be phased out, but it felt strange. At one cashless restaurant, there was a bar code on our table so I was able to scan it to see our bill and then pay online. I rarely paid cash unless I had to and had recently become addicted to paying contactless with my phone so it made no difference to me although I expect there were plenty of people that mourned the passing of real money.
After a pleasant three days in Brighton we got Joe, our regular taxi driver to take us to Heathrow airport. Normally I paid drivers extra to keep quiet during a journey but having accepted that Joe simply had no control over his mouth, I found him quite entertaining. The only thing he wanted to do in life was to work and his only ambition was to win the lottery, spending £40 a week towards that objective. I asked him what was the point of winning the lottery if the only thing he wanted to do was work, and he revealed his master plan. He would give five million to each of his children so they could all “xxxx off.” As for the rest of the money, instead of people paying to use his cab, he would pay them. When he discovered I was a musician he kept going on about his favourite guitarist “Roy.” He was unable to elaborate on the name and rejected my suggestion that it was “Rogers” so the subject hit a dead end.
2023 Mexico
